On March 18, 1584, one of the most terrible tyrants in the history of Russia, Tsar Ivan the Terrible, died. Immediately in Moscow, rumors spread about the violent death of the all-powerful autocrat. Disputes about the causes of the death of the Russian sovereign continue in our time.
An examination of the bone remains of Ivan IV, carried out in 1963, showed the presence of a lethal amount of mercury in the body of the tsar. Researchers immediately concluded that the mercury content was caused by the fact that Grozny was treating his syphilis with mercury ointment. Such treatment for a long time led to an increased content of mercury in the body and, as a consequence, the death of the monarch.
However, the scientist M. M. Gerasimov, who studied the remains of Ivan Vasilyevich in the 1960s, pointed out that if the king had syphilis, this disease would lead to pathological changes in the bones of the skeleton, but such changes were not found when studying the remains.
A contemporary of the tsar, the Englishman Jerome Horsey, said that the Russian monarch was strangled. At the same time, having examined the well-preserved cartilage of the tsar's larynx, Soviet scientists rejected this version of the murder of Ivan the Terrible.
But where did the mercury come from in the remains of the king, and even in such large quantities.
Maybe rumors about the poisoning of the king, which arose immediately after his death, still have a place under them. And the probable poisoners of Ivan IV were, as indicated by the tsar's contemporaries (clerk Ivan Timofeev, Dutchman Isaac Massa), the favorite of the monarch Bogdan Belsky and Boris Godunov, brother-in-law of Fyodor Ivanovich, son of Ivan the Terrible.
After all, it was Godunov who became the de facto ruler of Russia after the death of Ivan Vasilyevich, and Belsky became a member of the regency council, created under Fedor Ivanovich, who became king after the death of his father.
